1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a sorting apparatus designed to determine whether or not food articles, for example, nuts, are defective on the basis of transmitted light and to enable rejection of defective articles.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Nuts, corn and the like may deteriorate in quality due to fungi. Some fungus strains produce aflatoxins, which are extremely carcinogenic. Nuts which have been contaminated with such fungus strains are therefore inedible and must be sorted out in advance of packaging.
As a conventional method of sorting nuts, there has been a color sorting method wherein defective foods are identified by detection of the surface color change of articles (nuts). The color sorting method suffers, however, from the following problems. Although it is effective for articles the surfaces of which have undergone a color change due to an internal deterioration, it is ineffective for those which have not undergone any surface color change, and the appearance of which is indistinguishable from non-defective articles, although there has been an internal deterioration in quality. Articles in which a deterioration in quality is not evident from a surface color change are also difficult to identify by eye.